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Intel Q965GFEKR

The Intel Q965GFEKR is the motherboard we will be using for our initial GMA 3000 tests. For those interested in this Q965 micro-ATX motherboard, here are a few shots of the system. If anyone has any specific requests or would like some additional thoughts on the board, just post.

One thing to look for on these Intel motherboards is if their SATA controllers are the ICH7R, ICH7M, ICH7DH or ICH8R. If you get that then they should also support what is called 'ACHI' (Advanced Host Controller Interface).

It's part of "Intel&#174; Matrix Storage Technology". What it is is a open standard for driver communicating to your SATA controller. It's so you don't have to create special drivers for each new Sata chipset that comes out, if your controller support ACHI then it should be supported about equally as well. ACHI will be supported by Vista, and some other chipset makers have adopted it other then just Intel.

What this means for Linux is that with newer kernels you gain very good driver support for your SATA controller.http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html#matrix
With the latest kernel (or maybe 2.6.19) you gain..
Full Hotplug support (Yep. Libata supports that now)
NCQ support.
and Suspend/power management support.

This means that with everything else right you should be able to do suspend to ram and suspend to desktop with it. If you want to setup a Linux server then this is great as with the newer chipsets your running over PCIe which means that the PCI buss limitations for software RAID is gone (Ignore the Intel BIOS Raid stuff.. Linux MD software raid is better). You gain hotplug support, which previously only special hardware controllers supported. etc etc.

I don't know if this board supports it though...

Also I am curious about the sound. Like how well can you get surround sound working with the onboard and especially SPDIF out with AC3/DTS passthru for setting up a home theater setup.

With the Duo Core cpus (for the low heat), the onboard GPU, and if the spdif stuff is fine, then this motherboard would be ideal for a high performance home theater setup. Much easier to get quite then something with a big video card that required a big power supply.

Also looking into Xen and VT might be interesting. For those people that need Windows for the odd program you should be able to setup Xen if the motherboard AND cpu support the VT extensions to run Windows in DomU. Then you should be able to access Windows XP Pro via rdesktop on your local desktop.

Unfortunately for games and such it wouldn't help since Xen/Linux and hardware doesn't support the ability to allow host OSes control over peices of hardware (Maybe in a couple years)

One thing to look for on these Intel motherboards is if their SATA controllers are the ICH7R, ICH7M, ICH7DH or ICH8R. If you get that then they should also support what is called 'ACHI' (Advanced Host Controller Interface).

It's part of "Intel&#174; Matrix Storage Technology". What it is is a open standard for driver communicating to your SATA controller. It's so you don't have to create special drivers for each new Sata chipset that comes out, if your controller support ACHI then it should be supported about equally as well. ACHI will be supported by Vista, and some other chipset makers have adopted it other then just Intel.

What this means for Linux is that with newer kernels you gain very good driver support for your SATA controller.http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html#matrix
With the latest kernel (or maybe 2.6.19) you gain..
Full Hotplug support (Yep. Libata supports that now)
NCQ support.
and Suspend/power management support.

This means that with everything else right you should be able to do suspend to ram and suspend to desktop with it. If you want to setup a Linux server then this is great as with the newer chipsets your running over PCIe which means that the PCI buss limitations for software RAID is gone (Ignore the Intel BIOS Raid stuff.. Linux MD software raid is better). You gain hotplug support, which previously only special hardware controllers supported. etc etc.

I don't know if this board supports it though...

Also I am curious about the sound. Like how well can you get surround sound working with the onboard and especially SPDIF out with AC3/DTS passthru for setting up a home theater setup.

With the Duo Core cpus (for the low heat), the onboard GPU, and if the spdif stuff is fine, then this motherboard would be ideal for a high performance home theater setup. Much easier to get quite then something with a big video card that required a big power supply.

The Intel Q965GFEKR uses the Q965 Northbridge and ICH8 Southbridge, and yes, it supports AHCI.

We've been working on a Xen performance article for a while now to compare both AMD and Intel CPUs.

Still fighting some issues unrelated to the graphics... The numbers should be complete upon the FC6 launch next week. The GMA 3000 will be compared against some ATI products with the open-source R300 drivers.

Cool.
Be sure to throw in a comparision with the fglrx propriatory drivers. I bet people will think that would be very interesting.

Also gaming compatability would be interesting. Some free software games I guess (it's free software drivers after all!). Something like Torcs, Flightgear, Nexiuz, Termulos, Vdrift, ManiaDrive (check this one out if you haven't before) etc etc. What ever you like.(of course!) But also some of the more popular commercial items.